I’ve teamed up with @DoniW to give you some tips on presentations and public speaking! Enjoy 🙂

In some stage of our life (especially this day and age) we may have to present a powerpoint presentation whether for school, uni, work or even personal use. Although the actual content of the powerpoint presentation is important, how it is presented – in other words, how it is designed needs to be thought about.

If you present an appealing powerpoint presentation, your audience will enjoy looking at the slides and become more interested compared to a presentation where there is nothing interesting to look at. Appearance is also important hence today’s post is about me giving you guys five design tips for creating a decent powerpoint presentation. I hope these tips become useful for you.

Tip #1 – Colour Scheme

Image Credit: Nose Graze

Having colour makes a powerpoint presentation visually appealing and less mundane! The colourful, the better! However, it would be great to have a colour scheme or a colour theme for every powerpoint presentation you create. Having a colour scheme makes your powerpoint presentation look organised and consistent in the flow of colour (if that makes sense). Having random colours here and there would make your presentation look messy and disconnected. Using colour schemes to design presentations is a common method and it is great way of making your presentation look neat.

Tip #2 – Transparency

You know those images which have a solid background around the image and obviously isn’t transparent – but since you have no choice you put it in the presentation anyway despite how lame it looks? Obviously, those types of images don’t look that great compared to a transparent background image. The transparent image looks better, right (see difference above)? To remove the white background or any sort of solid background, just click on your chosen image and on the navigation bar, click ‘Format’ and on the left, there is a function that says ‘remove background’. From there you can select the area you want to remove and there you go, a transparent background image! Many professional powerpoint presenters make their images transparent because it looks awesome and makes it look pro. Transparency is my key design element. It makes my slide look much better.

Tip #3 – Font Styles

Image Credit: Free Design Resources

The fancier your presentation is, the more appealing it is to your audience. People like to see interesting stuff so why not make your presentation interesting with cool fonts? Simply google ‘free fonts’ and there are many to choose from! Plenty of them are free.  If you would like a recommendation, check out this website http://fontmeme.com/fonts/. I already downloaded fonts from this website and it is great.

Tip #4 – Pixels

Image Credit: Optical Illusion 

Since when did pixelated images look good (see above)? Don’t use them! Find high resolution images to make your powerpoint presentation look awesome (see below)!

Image Credit: Wallpaper Cave

If you plan to have a background in your powerpoint slide, you should download a background that is at least 1920 × 1200. It is likely you would present your powerpoint on a larger screen and if your presentation contains a image which is lower than 1920 x 1200, It may look pixelated hence look lame! Use high resolution images to make your slides look attractive – not pixelated!

Tip #5 – Visuals

Image Credit: Business News Daily 

Without images, the powerpoint presentation would look dull and boring! Add some visuals – visuals attract people’s eye. Ensure the images you use are relevant to what you are discussing. You could also make it humorous by adding some memes where appropriate. I did a presentation in legal studies and a random sight of a troll face resulted some giggles. Humour wakes people up, interests people. There are instances where memes and funny material is appropriate but if it is a formal presentation for an assessment, this may not be the time it is appropriate to include them. I use this technique mainly for usual class presentations, not really for formal assessments. Ensure images do not cover up text. Lastly, ensure each slide is not too crowded with images. That would make it look messy.

That’s it – these are my five design tips for powerpoint presentations. I hope you find these tips helpful and tell me what you think on the comments below. Thank you Jess for collaborating with me (my first time collaborating). It was nice to team up with Jess, she is an understanding and polite young lady. Appreciate the effort she put in creating her post for my blog which can be viewed in my blog. Thanks again and wish you all the best for your future presentations!

Oh also, if you would like to see one of my presentations – click here to be redirected to Slideshare where I have uploaded some of my work which I presented.

Bye (for now!)

– Doni W

Cover Photo Credit: HBR